-Even if Daggerfall is free to download, I'm not expecting everyone to have played it. Go with your gut-feeling.

-Pick what you'd like to see Skyrim have in the first 3 questions.

-Some people think GPS in TES4 is the best thing, while other think it's the worst. Thats why some things are twice. Vote YAY or NAY, not both.

-Pick only 2-3 of both YAYs and NAYs, otherwise all we see is full red bars on every slot.

-Don't post unless you have something to say, don't want to get locked too soon.

-I checked the numbers from wiki and UESP, don't flame if there's a minor miscalculation.

-Feel free to point out your own biggest disappointments and biggest positive surprises during the evolution of the series.

-Each game represents the graphical edge of it's own time. Saying that a sequel improved on graphics is pointless.

-Keep your civilized manners as the forums rules tell you to. Thank you and let's discuss ^_^

The only things I feel really strongly about:
I HATE THE LEVEL SCALING as many others do too
and
SPEARS give me my spears back please, unarmored and medium armor would be nice too :thumbsup:

Where's the "NAY - Full voice acting" option?

I hope there are more major factions with individual questlines in Skyrim. I like how the questlines for the four major factions in Oblivion are long, well written (some of them), and well done, but I wish there were more. These are definitely better than the main quest.

The number of skills is important as long as there is a definite choice involved and not the illusion of choice. Swords + axes wasn't a choice. They work in every situation. I'm all for more weapon types only if weapons are diverse and not just reskins of the same mechanic. Something like medical skill allows a Non-magic user to heal (of course OB did away with this by letting you completely regen in 1 hr and did away with random encounters so resting was not dangerous.) the language skills were interesting, but unnecessary in Morrowind (it was possible, but not necessary)

The number of factions in Daggerfall was vast, but they all felt the same after a while (quests were "go kill this / find this, bring it here" rewards were somewhat more varied but you could get all of them if you picked your factions carefully). Morrowind made them feel very distinct, but it didn't deliver on rewards IMO ( you didn't gain access to any huge game changing mechanic by being high in the guild. Sure there were strongholds, but I was happy to take over a cave from some bandits in most cases. In other words they were a cosmetic change.) Oblivion was more of the same in a lot of ways. and in a lot of ways much less. the fighters guild was easier (IMO) for a thief, the Mages Guild was easier for my fighters (remember the ring of burdening? necromancers? that's fighters stuff, no magic necessary) and the thieves guild was Robin Hoods merry men. I don't care how many factions there are, but it should be an interesting choice which faction to join rather than "which should i join FIRST." I think there should be a consequence to joining. maybe your relation with a faction falls over time, so you only have time to keep up with a couple or struggle not to be expelled. (this might require random quests again, which I wouldn't mind too much as long as that's not ALL there is)

The land mass doesn't make much difference to me OB felt smaller to me (regardless of the actual numbers compared to the others) but it also felt crammed with dungeons. Any size it is, I'm sure there will be enough to keep me busy for a while. sure we could have Daggerfall size maps, but who actually walked anywhere. fast travel made it feel small. Morrowind was biggest in my mind because I KNEW I would never find everything, and that was big enough for me. even if i did find everything (or get bored searching) there are mods to fix that (Nehrim proved this adequately)

For me the biggest disappointment from the tes2 - tes3 change was birth signs and enchanting. I loved balancing pros and cons. birth signs ruined that and enchanting did away with the interesting soul gems for more generic ones. the best part of the change was the more interesting landscape and interesting factions and that occasional interesting find ( I once found a cave with an ogrim and scamps, turns out someone tried summoning deadra and got had party instead.)

the biggest disappointment for me in OB was the feel of simplification. Daggerfall felt daunting to me starting out. the first cave scared the bejebus out of me. morrowind felt daunting too. I found a tomb with a deadroth in it. I was level 5. I never charged in without looking again. deadric ruins were scary. sure they were leveled on the outside, but inside I always died early on. they WERE dangerous. Oblivion was like a walk in the park. beginning to end. all the while I just kept thinking, "this is watered down and candy coated for the mainstream I guess."
the best part was the new combat, no more missing was much less annoying, but in the end it wasn't enough to make me forget about the past games. and now I play dwarf fortress, because its new and the combat makes so much more sense.

overall the thing that makes me stop playing these games is the leveling, I get obsessed with trying to get +5s everywhere and i forget to play the game. (that's not the biggest thing to fix, but its why I always put it down and say "what else do I have to play"

I had it, but it got lost during some editing. My bad. I know some people prefer partly voice acting only, but I also think they are a minority.

Anyways, if you think 35 skills is too much, see the skill list in my signature. No language skills or useless clutter (imho) but 35 skills out of which only 6 are new to the series.

The fact that Knightly Orders are only there to protect their Temple, Kingdom or Family pretty much dictates that they also have similair quests, and for the sake of loyalty you can only join one. If you manage to join a Knightly Order which mostly protects a certain corrupted yet powerful family, doing honorless errands, you could try to rebel and cleanse the Order. In Daggerfall all the orders had identical quests, but it still served it's purpose: you'd join the knights of the kingdom you call your home, or otherwise more significant to you character. It also gives you an illusion of a realistic medievalish world.

Landmass question is hard, and I was going to add an option "Somewhere between Daggerfall and sequels" but that would have been too obvious. With today's technology, a realistic scope is possible. Now you'd actually have use for the fast travel you hated so much in Oblivion. I think the fact that Skyrim is multiplatform prevents realistic scale, though. I only wish that Bethesda leaves a lot of 'empty' space around game's borders, so we can mod more content as with Oblivion.

Nothing breaks immersion for me more than a farmer sending me on a quest to kill wolves that have been killing his pigs. 'Ok' I say and turn north, where he said the wolves lair is supposed to be, only to SEE the friggin wolves in the distance, as well as the entrance to their cave. Stuffed-together game world feels like a stuffed-together game wolrd, nothing else. Game world should feel like a real world. In Daggerfall I never visited every city, never spoke to every individual in one city, never visited every shop in the city unless it was a really tiny one. If you ask me that's realism, but there are always people ready to call it pointless spamming of random content.

Oh, and about the land mass itself. In real life it's not hand-made, but formed according to the laws of erosion, which can be mimiced with computer programs, too. So the land mass you'd call random, is the most realistic one, if the program is any good.

The only TES game I have played was 4 and yes, it was a bit too simplistic in the ways that matter to me. Sure it had lots of dungeons and enemies, but the people in the world were 1 dimensional and I felt disconnected while doing many of the quests.

EDIT: I would advocate partial voice-acting if it means allowing the developers to give NPC's real personalities.

The language skills in Daggerfall were useless. Climbing would be cool, but could be part of acrobatics. Morrowind's skills were alright: Pretty much all of them were usable, and the division between blunt/axe and long/short blades made sense.

Some of these options are wrong.
Morrowind only had a degree of hand placed loot. A lot of it was random.

Skills:
I like choice, but choice at the expense of usefulness? Not so much. I'd almost like to see something along the lines of the original Fallout games or New Vegas where a skill could give you more conversation options..but some people might feel that's too out of place for TES. Other than that, more weapon choices would be welcome if they had a decent selection of them to choose from. If there are just going to be a bare handful of spears, throwing weapons, or the like..eh.

Factions:
Sure. But if it's just going to be all copy-paste "kill X" or "get 5 y" quests..I'd rather have fewer but more interesting factions.

Land:
Big enough to ensure that it's not all crammed together, but not big enough that it's going to take a month to get anywhere.

The problem with hand placed loot in Morrowind is that if you're replaying (or consult outside sources), you can obtain powerful items too early. Looking at you quest reward for discovering lost mine and chameleon amulet! I'd much rather that acquiring such items required travel to locations in which a low level character wouldn't survive.

oh your "that" guy. I know that post, I read it from start to finish and it was amazing. It solidified many of my opinions about what any rpg should consider. Matter of fact, when I said "medical skill" I had that post in mind.
have you played dwarf fortress ( you said you were hardcoe) what do you think of the combat? Many big name game makers have a lot to learn from this simple game. I think we could spend alot of time bouncing ideas back and forth.

I can agree with what you said about factions, but I cant expect them to bring back random quests like daggerfall, and without that I don't see them having that many factions. My point is that I would rather a choice between this or that instead of a choice between this and this again.

Again I can agree with your statement about landmasses, however if a bigger world meant less content, then smaller is acceptable. that said, bigger is definately better.
(I totally agree with your fast travel idea. Fast travel the roads only. I think this is the best compromise (thats not really a compromise) that anyone on the forums has mentioned.)

.
this is why I was so exited to learn about OB's level loot everywhere, but when I realised on my first character that I could no longer even find an iron mace, that something was very wrong. Every necromancer had a glass mace ( I leveled pretty quickly and skipped elven entirely) it was a huge disappointment and I never felt immersed again (until frans mod). I'm wasn't that crazy about handplaced loot either, but if its a choice between MW's leveling and OB's leveling, give me MW's.

Im sure there are solutions that won't make us feel like the devs didn't have any faith in our congnitive abilities.

I'm glad that someone new to the forums got throught that whole post. Started it sometime 2006-2007, been adding stuff here and there, so it's not perfectly put together.
Haven't tried Dwarf Fortress, I'm not really good at trying new RPGs. I might, though.
Anyway

Bring
Up
My
Poll



Edit: surprises me that everyone seems to like Birthsigns over Advantage/Disadvantage system! Surely Daggerfall's version needed more balancing (more in my sig), but later Birthsigns give you only what, 13 options, when Daggerfall had several millions of them. Now I'm unable to make a character with real weaknesses, while it used to be a great way to add challenge to the game.

I thought Morrowind was actually 4 square miles...? In any case, as far as land mass is concerned, I'd rather have a smaller, but perceived larger, landmass such as Morrowind. That way, the content is slightly more dense than was in Oblivion. Focus on the main content rather than land mass, eh?

Also, I would say "Nay" to voice acting. Again, it's about content, and as a personal preference, I'd rather read than hear redundant (and sometimes quirky) voice acting, repeatedly.

I want a land mass of Oblivion but with more quest and factions.

You are right, but apart from "insane blinding speed boots" even the third time i started over morrowind i've been looking for arctifact i had never found before

People like birthsigns, that all. You weren't really comparing it with the advantage/disadvantage system in the poll. At least that's not how I read it, so I said yay birthsigns. Most people probably haven't played Daggerfall so don't know about it.

But I'd love to see a Daggerfall-esque advantage/disadvantage system.

I thoroughly understand why you say I'm new, but I've been lurking for a long time. I just never saw the need to post until recently when input from the fans is important ( I suppose it always was, but now there's enough traffic that I feel posts WILL be read by the masses of "OMG TESV needs to be awesomer" fans that don't care about depth or Role Play value. Educating the masses, I believe, is the best way to motivate the leaders (devs in this case))

Its very well put together from a literate point of view (well organized) but I would do somethings differently of course. (everyone's style is a little different)
talking to the youth of today; reading is an abhorrent and archaic past-time. Its only a matter of time until they find ways of having road side billboards spoken to you thru the radio in your car. Bethesda has opened Pandora's box and things will never be the same again. sorry to rain on your parade.

I'm shocked this thread doesn't get more attention, there's potential for a lot of content here already but, well I guess people are more interested in "make TESV back into TESIII" or "OMG lets have 'feature X' at the expense of everything, because this other game had it"

I don't know if you read it but I had a few suggestions for magic over http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1148323-definitely-need-to-overhaul-the-magic/page__st__20

That is probably my most wanted return from Daggerfall.

And if birthsigns were balanced against it I don't see why it wouldn't be possible to have both.

I don't see why this should not be possible. All of the games had an easy rout (pick a class, answer questions, or custom class ( Ob's was a little different, as there was the Tutorial cave.))

I like Morrowinds, Oblivion is to little and Daggerfall is too much. I'd like the land mass to be a bit bigger than Oblivion maybe 20 square miles.